Tag Archives: Finland nuclear energy

The site for Posiva’s repository at Eurajoki for the disposal of Finland’s high-level radioactive waste (used nuclear fuel), near the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant, was selected in 2000. The Finnish parliament approved the the repository project the following year in 2001… The government granted a construction licence for the project in November 2015 and construction work on the repository started iin 2016. Posiva’s plan is for used nuclear fuel to be packed inside copper-steel canisters at an above-ground encapsulation plant, from where they will be transferred into the underground tunnels of the repository, located at a depth of 400-450 meters, and further into deposition holes lined with a bentonite buffer. Operation of the repository is expected to begin in 2023. The cost estimate of this large-scale construction project totals about EUR500 million (USD570 million), the company said.

Posiva announced on June 25, 2019 the start of construction of the used fuel encapsulation plant. Janne Mokka, Posiva’s President, noted, “In Finland, full lifecycle management of nuclear fuel is a precondition for the production of climate-friendly nuclear electricity. Posiva will execute the final disposal of the spent fuel of its owners’ Olkiluoto and Loviisa nuclear power plants responsibly.”

Sweden is planning a similar used fuel encapsulation and disposal facility using the same storage method. Under its current timetable, national radioactive waste management company Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB plans to start construction of the used fuel repository and the encapsulation plant sometime early in the 2020s and they will take about 10 years to complete.

Exceprts from Work starts on Finnish fuel encapsulation plant, World Nuclear News, June 25, 2019

The Onkalo Nuclear Repository, Finland: Buried in holes in the floor will be copper canisters, 5.2 metres long, containing the remains of some of the world’s most radioactive nuclear waste. When the drilling is finished, in a century or so, 3,250 canisters each containing half a tonne of spent fuel will be buried in up to 70km of tunnels. Then the entire area will be sealed to make it safe for posterity.

The hundred-year timescale already means this is a megaproject. But that is just the beginning. The radioactive isotopes of plutonium used in nuclear-power plants must be stored for tens of thousands of years before they are safe. Finland aims to isolate its stockpile in the Onkalo repository, a burial chamber beneath the small forested island of Olkiluoto, home to one of its two nuclear-power plants, for at least 100,000 years.

In geological terms, that is a heartbeat; Finland’s bedrock is 1.9bn years old. But in human terms, 4,000 generations are almost inconceivable. As Mika Pohjonen, the managing director of Posiva, the utility-owned Finnish company overseeing the project, says, no one knows whether humans, creatures (or machines) will rule the Earth above by then—let alone whether they will be able to read today’s safety manuals. A hundred thousand years ago, Finland was under an ice sheet and Homo sapiens had not yet reached Europe….

But Posiva’s immediate priority is to create disposal caverns far enough from rock fissures and groundwater that Finland’s nuclear authorities allow it to start moving the canisters to their tomb in the early 2020s. “This is drilling with silk gloves on,” Mr Pohjonen says, as the machine pounds the rock with a deafening roar. “It has to be done gently.”

The disposal of nuclear fuel is among the most intractable of infrastructure projects. And there are already 266,000 tonnes of it in storage around the world, about 70,000 tonnes more than there were a decade ago. As Markku Lehtonen, a Finnish academic at the University of Sussex, puts it, the costs are high; the benefits are about avoiding harm rather than adding value; and evaluation is not about assessing risk, but about dealing with “uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance” over a protracted timescale….

Finland began the search for a site in 1983, shortly after it began generating nuclear power, and chose Olkiluoto after reviewing 100 areas. It has mapped faults and fissures in the bedrock, and sited the repository in a seismic “quiet zone”. It says it will avoid burying canisters close to potential pressure points, to minimise the danger that rock movements would crush or tear the canisters and cause radioactive leakage. Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) called Posiva’s analysis of the bedrock and groundwater “state of the art”…

But whether in crystalline granite, as in Finland and Sweden, or clay, as in France, or volcanic rock, as in Yucca Mountain, nuclear experts are confident that deep geological disposal can be safe. “There is a great deal of evidence that we can find many sites in the world with adequate geological properties for the required safety,” says Stefan Mayer, a waste-disposal expert at the IAEA.

Technology is the next hurdle. As well as 400-500 metres of bedrock between the canisters and the surface, there will be several man-made layers: steel, copper, water-absorbent bentonite clay around the canisters, and bentonite plugs sealing the caverns and, eventually, the access tunnel…. Some academics…are worried that the Finnish media have underplayed concerns about copper corrosion, compared with other countries with similar “multi-barrier” protection systems.

The trickiest challenge, though, is to build broader societal consent. Finland appears to have succeeded by starting early and sticking to its timetable. The decision to find a site and start disposing of nuclear waste in the 2020s was taken 40 years ago. In 1994 its parliament banned the import and export of spent nuclear fuel, which increased the pressure to find a home-grown solution. Few other countries have demonstrated the same determination. The good news is that, because waste needs to be cooled in tanks for 30-50 years before being disposed of, emerging nuclear powerhouses such as China have time to prepare.

Finns’ trust in their nuclear industry has remained high, despite accidents elsewhere, such as those at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011. Finland’s four nuclear reactors operate at among the world’s highest utilisation rates, and supply 26% of its electricity. Its two nuclear utilities, TVO and Fortum, which co-own Posiva, are themselves part of an electricity system in which Finnish industries and many municipalities have a stake, bolstering public support. The Onkalo repository is situated next door to TVO’s two working Olkiluoto reactors, which means people nearby are—in the phrase of academics—“nuclearised”, that is, convinced of the benefits of nuclear power. Surveys suggest positive attitudes to nuclear power nationally exceed negative ones.

Some academics worry that Finland is taking waste disposal too much on faith. Any mishap could erode trust in an instant, as happened in Japan, another “high-trust” society, after the Fukushima disaster.,,

Other countries, including America and France, follow principles of reversibility or retrievability, meaning they can reverse the disposal process while it is under way or retrieve waste after burial, if technologies and social attitudes change. Finland’s model is more closed; it would take a huge amount of digging to recover the waste once it has been sealed. But analysts say there is no single correct approach. Britain, for instance, has done things by the book but still failed to find a place for a repository.

Finally, there is the matter of cost. Finland’s nuclear-waste kitty, collected from the utilities, currently stands at €2.5bn ($2.7bn). By the time it is closed, the price is expected to be €3.5bn. That is reassuringly modest for a 100-year project, partly reflecting the fact that Finland’s nuclear industry, even when the planned total of five reactors are up and running, is relatively small. Other countries have higher costs, and less discipline. Yucca Mountain, for instance, was once estimated to cost $96bn to complete. In 2012 America had $27bn in its disposal fund, collected from ratepayers, none of which has gone towards nuclear-waste management.

Excerpts Disposing Nuclear Waste: To the Next Ice Age and Beyond, Economist, Apr. 15, 2017

[A third nuclear reactor is to be built in Flamanville, France by Electricité de France (EDF)]…Called Flamanville 3, is likely to become the focus of international attention because it is the model for an imminent expansion across the channel…EDF has agreed on October 21st agreed with China General Nuclear Power Corp (CGN), a state-owned entity, to build two reactors of the same design in south-west England called Hinkley Point C. EDF will own two-thirds of the project and CGN a third. The plant in Somerset is supposed to open by 2025, after construction that is forecast to cost £24.5 billion ($37.8 billion)…

The history of Flamanville 3, where work began in 2007, indicates how difficult that might be. It was planned as a five-year scheme, but this month EDF, which is mostly state-owned, formally asked officials to extend the deadline to 2020. Its original budget of €3.3 billion has more than tripled, to €10.5 billion ($11.9 billion). Getting its new European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) into service is proving harder than expected. One problem is the troubled condition of Areva, another mostly state-owned French firm, which supplies reactor components. It reported losses of nearly €5 billion in March, because of soaring costs and long delays at the only other EPR being built in Europe, Olkiluoto 3, in Finland. Work began in 2005 but it will not open before 2018 at the earliest.

The main technical problem at Flamanville 3 concerns suspicions of high levels of carbon in the steel of a crucial component, the vessel, already installed under the dome of the new reactor. Replacing it now, if inspectors conclude it is too brittle, would be costly. In June the company also said it was double-checking the working of safety valves.

Meanwhile EDF’s financial burden grows. It boasts of €73 billion in global revenues, but faces a threefold strain. Demand for electricity is stalling in France, its main market—and, as problematic, the country plans to cut nuclear’s share of electricity generation to half of the total, by 2025, from 75%. Next, though details are not finalised, EDF will absorb the nuclear unit of troubled Areva. Last, it has to upgrade, or at least maintain, France’s stock of ageing reactors. Mr Lévy told French radio on October 18th that capital expenditure for that alone would be around €50 billion.

No wonder ratings agencies judge that EDF’s financial prospects are secure only because of its state backing. EDF’s prospects, indeed those of any nuclear company, depend on the backing of politicians who want to preserve nuclear expertise and jobs at home.